The Tree of Life Movie Review

Do yourself a favor if you’re going to watch The Tree of Life: set aside a block of time during which you won’t be interrupted. This is a movie that needs to be experienced in its entirety as single entity. It is not a traditional narrative film. Containing experimental elements, it is more a philosophical exploration of life’s origins and the binary nature of the world we live in. If you’re open to new experiences and ready for a thought-provoking movie, then by all means give it a shot. If, on the other hand, this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea or you read some kind of plot description somewhere that sounded like it’s a good story, then turn back now. This isn’t for you.

Melancholia Movie Review

Leave it Lars von Trier to start a film with the apocalypse. As a mysterious planet roughly the size of Jupiter hurtles towards Earth in the opening montage of Melancholia, scenes on the ground involving Justine and Claire are almost frozen in time using super slow motion photography to create an otherworldly effect as if we’re watching paintings in motion. Then we see our beautiful blue planet swallowed up by the massive celestial object looming over it. The world ceases to exist in that moment.

Drive Movie Review: Ryan Gosling as Swarthy Thug

At one point in Drive a character makes a snide comment about the movies he used to produce being “European,” as if that’s automatically understood to mean pseudo-intellectual garbage. It’s an ironic comment and one of the myriad ways director Nicolas Winding Refn thumbs his nose at Hollywood. Drive may flaunt its gorgeous matinee idol of a lead (Ryan Gosling), its car chases and violent action (all hallmarks of popular American cinema) but everything else about it screams European, from its 80s retro tone and soundtrack to the abundance of slow-motion and dearth of talk.

Classic Film Review: Roland Joffe's The Mission

As a staunch non-believer I’ve only ever encountered two films that gave me a sense of what religious fulfillment is. Not that I was spiritually awakened or felt a desire to convert – nothing of the kind – but that the film was so skilled at conveying the significance of faith in God’s love without being preachy, that I understood through character development and acting what it is to find redemption and peace. And isn’t that what the vast majority of narrative cinema is about? It’s meant to provide you a glimpse into other people’s lives for a couple of hours and make you believe in their beliefs.

The first of these was The Mission, directed by Roland Joffe, and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. I first watched it many years ago while I was in high school or college and I wasn’t sure if a second viewing so many years later would still produce the same effect in me. The difference this time was that I had greater appreciation for the craft of the film, which most likely subconsciously influenced my original belief that it was a great film.

Antichrist Movie Review: I Have Seen the Antichrist and It is Woman

First published at American Madness on 4 October 2009.

Reposted here with the addition of a single sentence.

Lars von Trier has been known since his breakthrough film Breaking the Waves for putting not only his protagonists, but also his audience, through a series of torturous steps until reaching a climax surpassing all the pain that had come before it. Thus we are treated to the hanging death of the blind Selma in Dancer in the Dark and the gang rape of Grace in Dogville.

As such we don’t enter a von Trier film with the same expectations of being entertained as we would from most other films. His films are not designed with entertainment in mind, but as studies in the human condition with a particular focus on grief and torment as the principle emotions. In a certain respect, his films are highbrow torture porn.

Reordering Convention: Introduction to an Analysis of Pulp Fiction

Following is the introduction to a full shot-by-shot analysis of Pulp Fiction that I did several years ago. This is not meant to be an essay or thesis, but rather an examination of the way Tarantino uses shot setups and narrative devices to effectively tell his story. I will try to post one new section a day over the next few weeks.

Since its release in October 1994, I have seen Pulp Fiction about eighteen times from beginning to end, including six times during its initial theatrical run. No viewing has ever compared to the first time when I was sixteen years old and not yet aware of what the film medium could accomplish. I was not yet versed in film history and I hardly knew from where director Quentin Tarantino was deriving most of his inspiration. All I knew after that first time was that movies did not merely have to be plot-driven. To borrow from Gene Siskel, movies aren’t what they are about, but how they are about it. Movies can be inventive, witty and can change the way we look at motion pictures.

Of Gods and Men Movie Review: Who Knew the Monastic Life Could Make such Fascinating Cinema?

France has suffered an 18 year dry spell at the Oscars, last having won the Foreign Language Film award for Indochine. Their submission for this year, Of Gods and Men, could well be the one to break the bad luck streak. It’s already won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Here is a film of remarkably accomplished skill in storytelling, film technique and empathy.

It’s so refreshing to see a filmmaker who really understands how to use the medium of film effectively. Director Xavier Beauvois has obviously studied and internalized the masters who established film technique when the art form was still in its infancy. The first half is almost like a silent film. Dialogue is minimal. Everything is presented as image and we never have any question about who the characters are, what their relations are to one another or how they feel.

Dogtooth Movie Review: A Sophomoric Attempt at Symbolism and Meaning

When I was in my twelfth grade English class I was fixated on symbolism, loss of innocence metaphors and literature that you could tuck in a neat package. At that time, Hamlet was a play Shakespeare wrote to highlight a cancer metaphor with its “unweeded gardens” and “things rank and gross in nature.” If I had set out at age 17 to write a movie, it probably would have looked something like Giorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou’s screenplay for Dogtooth.

This film has no business existing. Lanthimos, who also directed the film, has two prior directing credits, neither released outside of Greece, according to IMDb. It seems the intent was to explore human nature, psychology and sexuality through a family which lives entirely isolated within a walled environment. The only one who leaves the yard is the father, who leaves daily for his job in a factory. He keeps his three children (all seemingly well into adulthood, but I believe intended to be in their late teens and early twenties) prisoner. He does not accomplish this through use of force, threats, locks or chains, but rather through psychology. These three individuals, consisting of a Son and an Older and Younger Daughter (none of the children have names – one of several pointless exercises), have never been in contact with anyone from outside their small world. Their parents have spun an elaborate story that keeps them fearful and believing that you can only leave once your canine tooth has fallen out. And even then it’s only safe to be in a car.

This odd living situation has fostered an environment in which mother and father have absolute control over their children including their education. They have some strange vocabulary sets: a salt shaker is known as a telephone; keyboard is their word for vagina. To what end they decided to instill this measure is unknown. I can tell you that it’s in the screenplay to demonstrate the kind of power one can have over a human’s development if there is not a single exterior influence on that mind. Sorry, but that’s not a good enough reason.

Why would two parents choose to raise their children under such conditions? The clue comes late in the film when the father beats and berates a woman who has brought terrible knowledge to the family: he wishes children upon her who are exposed to danger and keep her worried. Apparently this is the parents’ motivation – to keep their children safe. I can believe one parent being so insane as to pull this off, but both mother and father? It’s a bit hard to swallow. And the film provides no indication that the mother is subservient to her husband, that he beats her or threatens her. They are both willing participants in this sick experiment.

The woman who brings knowledge to the family is Christina. She is paid to come to the house (blindfolded and driven by the father) regularly to have sex with the son. Christina is not satisfied with just him and so goes to the older daughter for additional pleasure. Here we have the big Loss of Innocence Metaphor. This one’s as old as The Bible itself. We all know Adam and Eve lived in bliss before they discovered their sexuality at which point God banished them. Just to emphasize the point (in case you didn’t get it) guess what color the children are always wearing. If you said white then you can pass a high school literature class.

After the father discovers that Christina has left pornographic videos for the older daughter she is not permitted to return. However, they need a replacement and can’t risk another outsider. So the job falls to one of the two daughters. It’s never clear why the parents find it necessary that the son should achieve periodic sexual release but their daughters not. Herein lies the most absurd conceit of the film: the idea that three people would have reached adulthood or near without having discovered their own sexuality and masturbation. They are all one hundred percent innocent in that regard and don’t even have any sense of shame or embarrassment at nudity or sex. It seems to me that shame and embarrassment, when it comes to men and women naked together is from the anatomical differences. It can’t only be a social phenomenon. The entire family is fully clothed throughout the day. Nudity is reserved for private bedroom antics. Surely there would be some sense of at least curiosity in the naked bodies of members of the opposite sex. The sex depicted is cold and emotionless, even that between the parents who don headphones with music playing during the act.

Lanthimos draws a great deal of inspiration from Michael Haneke with a smattering of David Lynch, as when the son deftly plays a guitar melody while the daughters perform a bizarre and childish dance routine. Haneke’s films also delve deep into human nature, but the stories make sense and are coupled with a superb visual style. Lanthimos thinks you make an art film by having long static shots that aren’t framed well.

Another big problem I have with the human side of this story is the belief that none of the children would have ever become slightly suspicious of the lies told by the parents. That in twenty years or more they never had the curiosity to test what would happen if they went outside the walls. One of the lies involves another one of their children who lives outside the walls and can’t return. The most absurd is the threat of a punishment for their bad behavior: the mother is pregnant with twins and a dog. The twins will have to share a room with one of the existing children unless they are good in which case the twins won’t be born. The dog is coming regardless. Perhaps there was also some inspiration drawn from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village which was also about a group of people who kept their children confined to a make-believe world by inventing lies. At least Shyamalan understood the curious nature of people.

The one aspect of psychology I think Lanthimos and Filippou get right is the behavior of the children. They are not socialized adults in any way. Although they appear grown up, they behave like children. They have petty arguments and fights with one another the same way young siblings would do.

The film ends on an ambiguous note. It may be frustrating to many viewers but ask yourself these two questions: How would you end the film? And after enduring such pretention does it really matter?

**A side note: This film won the top award in the 2009 Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section which is intended for younger directors exhibiting bold, daring and creative films. It's won several other film festival prizes and has gotten almost unanimous favorable reviews. Critics (and especially film festival juries) love to laud the films that most closely resemble their idea of an “art film”. I’m thankful I have the courage to say that the emperor is standing stark naked this time.

25 Years Ago This Month: May 1985

I'm now at that age where I have memories of things that happened 25 years ago. And to realize that those things were 25 (!) years ago is sometimes startling.

Events not connected with movies are at the end.

2010 Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan (An Education) turns 25 this month.

Deaths of 25 years ago include actress Margaret Hamilton - best known as The Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz - at age 82.

Also Disney animator and director Wolfgang Reitherman at age 75. He was one of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men" (original core group of animators). He worked as an animator for Disney starting in 1934, eventually directing 6 animated features from One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) to The Rescuers (1977).

The 37th Cannes Film Festival was held with Milos Forman serving as President of the Jury. Amir Kuristica's When Father Was Away on Business won the Palme d'Or. Alan Parker's Birdy won the Grand Prix while William Hurt took Best Actor for Kiss of the Spider Woman (he would later win the Oscar for the same role) and Cher won Best Actress (in a tie) for her role in Mask.

May 1985, the month I turned 7, saw the U.S. release of Gotcha! starring a very young Linda Fiorentino and Anthony Edwards. This would have been Fiorentino's film debut had it not been for February's release of Vision Quest starring Matthew Modine. Fiorentino would have a hell of a debut year with a role in Martin Scorsese's After Hours released in October. She would make little impression for the next 9 years until her starring role in the neo-noir The Last Seduction. Edwards was hot off the success of 1984's Revenge of the Nerds. And wouldn't you know it, this movie about a college student and champion of a campus paintball assassination game who gets caught up with a strange Czech woman and some East German Cold War intrigue is having its DVD debut next month! It made a paltry $8.9 million at the domestic box office.

Also released in May that year was Rambo: First Blood Part II which provided an unnecessary sequel to a fairly decent parable on the social exclusion of the Vietnam veteran. Rambo II is little more than a revisionist history tale in which the lone American soldier goes back to single-handedly win the Vietnam War and bring home his lost comrades. It was the number two box office draw of the year raking in $150 million.

These were two movies I recall watching fairly often when they played on what I imagine was HBO because I don't think we had any other pay cable station back then.

Roger Moore's final turn as 007 in A View to a Kill opened in May, eventually taking in a middling $50 million to place it at 13 on that year's box office list, just behind...

Chevy Chase's comedy, ahem, classic Fletch. Admittedly I've never seen this oft-quoted film. Along with Caddyshack it's one of my comedy classic holes. Somehow I don't think I'm likely to find either very funny at this stage in my life. Surely high school is when you have to see Fletch and, for better or worse, I'm well beyond that era.

The John Candy/Richard Pryor comedy Brewster's Millions (also unseen by me) was released in May 1985, as well ($41 million and number 20 on the list).

So was Chuck Norris's Missing in Action follow-up Code of Silence, ranked 44 on the box office list with $20 million.

Non-movie-related:

-Michael Jordan was named the NBA Rookie of the Year.
-Israel trades 1150 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers yet continues to be responsible for all the ills in that region.
-Britain agreed to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
-Madonna had her second #1 hit in "Crazy for You" from the soundtrack of the aforementioned Vision Quest.
-Olympic gold medal figure skater Sarah Hughes was born
-Juventus defeated Liverpool 1-0 in the European Cup Final but not before a wall in Heysel Stadium in Brussels collapsed, killing 39 and injuring 600. They felt that not playing the match after the tragedy would create more problems, so they went ahead with a bit of footy anyway.

List: Top Ten Palme d'Or Winners

The Cannes Film Festival is always an exciting time for seeing what's on the world cinema docket for the coming year. This year's festival is a few weeks away and the lineup is set. In addition to new films from Cannes regulars Mike Leigh (Palme d'Or 1996 for Secrets and Lies; Best Director 1993 for Naked), Abbas Kiarostami (Palme d'Or 1997 for Taste of Cherry) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Best Director 2006 for Babel) there is a sequel to Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun (1994 Grand Prix winner), a new film from Doug Liman based on the memoir of Valerie Plame.

Burnt by the Sun 2 picks up the story of Col. Kotov several years after his execution (he was never executed on screen, but a post-script revealed he'd been shot) as a soldier in Stalin's army fighting back the Nazis in WWII.

Liman's Fair Game stars Naomi Watts as Plame, the former CIA operative, whose identity was revealed by Washington Post reporter Robert Novak, and Sean Penn as her husband Joseph Wilson who claims the Bush administration leaked her identity in order to discredit him after he criticized the Iraq invasion. Liman had a promising start to his career with his hilarious debut Swingers followed up by the Pulp Fiction-for-kids Go and then the first in the Bourne trilogy. After that he started a two-film downward spiral that culminated in the horrifically received (16% on the Tomato Meter) Jumper. I don't imagine his new film will be much more than standard Hollywood boilerplate conspiracy theory. And that Liman has established himself as a premiere action director, I would expect this new film to have several unnecessary action sequences thrown in for good measure. Don't look for any awards to be handed to this film.

As for the rest of the line up, I have no idea. It's virtually impossible to make any kind of prediction about the festival until it kicks off and we hear what critics, producers, executives and attendees are saying.

So with that in mind, I decided to throw together a list. I promised lists at the beginning and I haven't delivered any yet. Well I looked over the list of Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winners and selected what I think are the 10 best, listed below alphabetically. In so doing I discovered how deficient my knowledge of foreign films is. I've really only seen about half the big winners of the last 60 years. Hopefully I will correct that one day and revise this list to reflect it.

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days (2007) dir. Cristian Mungiu - The herald of a New Romanian Cinema. This is a harrowing story of a young woman who enlists the help of a close friend to obtain an illegal abortion during Ceausescu's reign.
Barton Fink (1991) dir. Joel and Ethan Coen - Possibly the Coens' best film. It's certainly the darkest. About a New York playwright who tries his hand at Hollywood screenwriting on the eve of WWII.
Blow-Up (1967) dir. Michelangelo Antonioni - A brilliant comment on the truth and nature of photography, especially as it is delivered in the medium of motion pictures. A photographer thinks he's photographed a murder, but the blown up photo isn't clear enough to reveal truth while his own investigation fails to turn up evidence outside his own observation.
The Conversation (1974) dir. Francis Ford Coppola - Brilliant filmmaking in this exploration of paranoia in a post-Watergate America.
MASH (1970) dir. Robert Altman - Hilarious anti-war satire set during the Korean War but ostensibly a commentary on Vietnam.
The Mission (1986) dir. Roland Joffe - A Spanish slave trader in colonial South America does penance and slowly converts to the Jesuit order to help bring Christianity to the native people. This is one of the best films you've probably never seen.
Paris, Texas (1984) dir. Wim Wenders - A man is found wandering in the desert and brought to his brother. He can't make peace with himself until he finds his ex-wife and asks her forgiveness for his past treatment of her.
Pulp Fiction (1994) dir. Quentin Tarantino - Surely you know this one.
Taxi Driver (1976) dir. Martin Scorsese - Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle goes a little funny in the head trying to clean up the streets of New York.
The Third Man (1949) dir. Carol Reed - In a divided post-WWII Vienna, Harry Lime has been killed just before his close friend arrives from America. It turns out Harry has been involved in a black market trade of penicillin that has left many children horribly disfigured. One of the best of the original films noirs.